Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: These Terrorist Attacks Are Not About Religion

[Dingswayo]

Another horrendous act of terrorism has taken place and people like myself who are on media speed-dial under "Celebrity Muslims" are thrust in the spotlight to angrily condemn, disavow, and explain-again-how these barbaric acts are in no way related to Islam.

For me, religion-no matter which one-is ultimately about people wanting to live humble, moral lives that create a harmonious community and promote tolerance and friendship with those outside the religious community. Any religious rules should be in service of this goal. The Islam I learned and practice does just that.

Violence committed in the name of religion is never about religion-it's ultimately about money. The 1976 movie, All the President's Men, got it right when it reduced the Daedalus maze of the Watergate scandal to the simple phrase, "Follow the money." Forget the goons who actually carry out these deadly acts, they are nothing more than automated drones remote-controlled by others. Instead of radio signals, their pilots use selective dogma to manipulate their actions. They pervert the Qur'an through omission and false interpretation.

How is it about money? When one looks at the goal of these terrorist attacks, it's clearly not about scaring us into changing our behavior. The Twin Tower attacks of 9/11 didn't frighten America into embracing Islam. The fatwa against Salman Rushdie didn't prevent the publication of The Satanic Verses. Like all terrorist attacks on the West, they just strengthen our defiant resolve. So the attack in Paris, as with most others, isn't about changing Western behavior, it's about swaggering into a room, flexing a muscle, and hoping to elicit some admiring sighs. In this case, the sighs are more recruits and more donations to keep their organization alive. They have to keep proving they are more relevant than their competing terrorist groups. It's just business.

Nor should we blame America's foreign policy as the spark that lights the fuse. Poverty, political oppression, systemic corruption, lack of education, lack of critical thinking, and general hopelessness in these countries is the spark. Yes, we've made mistakes that will be used to justify recruiting new drones. But we shouldn't kid ourselves that the recent report detailing our extensive and apparently ineffective use of torture caused any kind of mass terrorist volunteers. The world knew we tortured. The only thing the report revealed was how bad we were at it. More important, if recruits were swayed by logical idealism, they would realize that the fact that we conducted, released, and debated such a report is what makes America admirable. We don't always do the right thing, but we strive to. We admit our faults and make adjustments. It may be glacial, but it's movement forward.

Knowing that these terrorist attacks are not about religion, we have to reach a point where we stop bringing Islam into these discussions. I know we aren't there yet because much of the Western population doesn't understand the Islamic religion. All they see are brutal beheadings, kidnappings of young girls, bloody massacres of children at schools, and these random shootings. Naturally, they are frightened when they hear the word Muslim or see someone in traditional Muslim clothing. Despite any charitable impulses, they also have to be thinking, "Better safe than sorry"-as they hurry in the opposite direction.

When the Ku Klux Klan burn a cross in a black family's yard, prominent Christians aren't required to explain how these aren't really Christian acts. Most people already realize that the KKK doesn't represent Christian teachings. That's what I and other Muslims long for-the day when these terrorists praising Mohammed or Allah's name as they debase their actual teachings are instantly recognized as thugs disguising themselves as Muslims. It's like bank robbers wearing masks of presidents; we don't really think Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush hit the Bank of America during their down time.

We can't end terrorism any more than we can end crime in general. Ironically, terrorism is actually an act against the very religion they claim to believe in. It's an acknowledgement that the religion and its teachings aren't enough to convince people to follow it. Any religion that requires coercion is not about the community, but about the leaders wanting power.I look forward to the day when an act of terrorism by self-proclaimed Muslims will be universally dismissed as nothing more than a criminal attack of a thuggish political organization wearing an ill-fitting Muslim mask. To get to that point, we will need to teach our communities what the real beliefs of Islam are. In the meantime, keep my name on speed-dial so we can get through this together.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: These Paris Attacks Are Not About Religion

 

[Lancashire]

I am totally agree this man Kareem abdul jabbar

 

[Khalidoun]

Stop asking Muslims to condemn terrorism. It's bigoted and Islamophobic

There's a certain ritual that each and every one of the world's billion-plus Muslims, especially those living in Western countries, is expected to go through immediately following any incident of violence involving a Muslim perpetrator. It's a ritual that is we went through with the Sydney hostage crisis in December, in which a deranged self-styled sheikh took several people hostage in a downtown café, and that is continuing now with the terrorist massacre at the Paris offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Here is what Muslims and Muslim organizations are expected to say: "As a Muslim, I condemn this attack and terrorism in any form."


This expectation we place on Muslims, to be absolutely clear, is Islamophobic and bigoted. The denunciation is a form of apology: an apology for Islam and for Muslims. The implication is that every Muslim is under suspicion of being sympathetic to terrorism unless he or she explicitly says otherwise. The implication is also that any crime committed by a Muslim is the responsibility of all Muslims simply by virtue of their shared religion.

This sort of thinking — blaming an entire group for the actions of a few individuals, assuming the worst about a person just because of their identity — is the very definition of bigotry. It is also, by the way, the very same logic that leads French non-Muslims, outraged by the Charlie Hebdo murders, to attack French mosques in hateful and misguided retaliation. And it's the same logic that led CNN host Don Lemon to ask Muslim-American human rights lawyer Arasalan Iftikhar if he supports ISIS, as if the simple fact of Iftikhar's religion — despite the fact that he is exactly the sort of liberal human rights activist whom ISIS hates most — made him suspect.

It is time for that ritual to end: non-Muslims in all countries, and today especially those in France, should finally take on the correct assumption that Muslims hate terrorism just as much as they do, and cease expecting Muslims to prove their innocence just because of their faith.

Bigoted assumptions are the only plausible reason for this ritual to exist, which means that maintaining the ritual is maintaining bigotry. Otherwise, we wouldn't expect Muslims to condemn the Charlie Hebdo attackers — who, if they spoke the truth in reportedly claiming to be from al-Qaeda's Yemen branch, belong to a group whose primary victims by far are fellow Muslims — any more than we would expect Christians to condemn Timothy McVeigh. Similarly, if someone blames all Jews for the act of, say, extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank, we immediately and correctly reject that position as prejudiced. We understand that such an accusation is hateful and wrong — but not when it is applied to Muslims.

This is, quite literally, a different set of standards that we apply only to Muslims. Hend Amry, who is Libyan-American, brilliantly satirized this expectation with this tweet in response to the bizarre biography of Sydney hostage-taker "Sheikh" Man Haron Monis, highlighting the arbitrary expectations about what Muslims are and are not expected to condemn:

As a Muslim, I condemn acts of sexual assault following time spent as a self-proclaimed spiritual healer specializing in black magic.

— Hend (@LibyaLiberty) December 15, 2014
This ritual began shortly after September 2001. American Muslims, as well as Muslims in other Western countries, feared that they could be victims to a public backlash against people of their religion. President George W. Bush feared this as well and gave a speech imploring Americans to embrace Muslim-Americans as fellow citizens. But while the short-term need to guard against a backlash was real, that moment has passed, and the ritual's persistence is perpetuating Islamophobia rather than reducing it, by constantly reminding us of our assumption that Muslims are guilty until proven innocent.

The media has played a significant role in maintaining this ritual and thus the prejudiced ideas behind it. Yes, that includes openly Islamophobic cable news hosts like those in the US. But it also includes even well-intentioned media outlets and reporters who broadcast Muslims' and Muslim organizations' condemnation of acts of extremist violence, like that in Paris.

There is no question that this coverage is explicitly and earnestly designed to combat Islamophobia and promote equal treatment of Muslims. No question. All the same, this coverage ends up cementing the ritual condemnation as a necessary act, and thus cementing as well the racist implications of that ritual. By treating it as news every time, the media is reminding its readers and viewers that Muslims are held to a different standard; it is implicitly if unintentionally reiterating the idea that they are guilty until proven innocent, that maybe there is something to the idea of collective Muslim responsibility for lone criminals who happen to share their religion.

Instead, we should treat the assumptions that compel this ritual — that Muslims bear collective responsibility, that they are presumed terrorist-sympathizers until proven otherwise — as flatly bigoted ideas with no place in our society. There is no legitimate reason for Muslim groups to need to condemn the monsters who attacked Charlie Hebdo, nor is there any legitimate reason to treat those condemnations as news. So we should stop.

We should treat people like the Charlie Hebdo attackers as what they are: monsters who kill both for the simple sake of killing and to provoke exactly the sort of religious conflict that mosque-attackers are indulging. And we should treat Muslims as what they are: normal people who of course reject terrorism, rather than as a lesser form of humanity that is expected to denounce violence every time it happens.

Update: This piece was originally written on December 15 and has been updated in the wake of the January 7 Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.